While I was expecting to see Anne Hathaway plastered all over my social media feed during the press tour for The Devil Wears Prada II, I wasn’t anticipating that she’d reach the more niche corners of the Muslim or Arab digital world. But of course, Hathaway did the one thing that gets every celebrity noticed in this little cul-de-sac of the internet – she uttered an Islamic term. 

During an interview with People Magazine, Hathaway (whilst inexplicably tapping her forehead) stated she wanted to enjoy a happy life ‘inshaAllah’. The Muslim and Arab world responded accordingly. As Arabic terms associated with Islamic prayer enjoy a surge in popularity through the democratic channels of social media, it seems we will continue to experience these moments of effusive community elation. But what makes high-profile celebrities reference Arabic prayer? And what makes us, as a community of believers, so enamoured by these micro-references?

There is a broader cultural shift towards the popularisation of Islamic terms. The most obvious example of this phenomenon is the creeping contagion of the word ‘wallahi’ amongst Gen Z, whose efforts to forge their own language, like every single generation that preceded them, is studied in obsessive detail by all corners of the media. Likely originating from the pidgin of the multi-ethnic streets of London and Toronto, and crystallised by its use in drill and trap (genres of music that depend upon novel, urban slang as a defining feature), wallahi has entered the chambers of mainstream lexicon. Though somewhat divorced from its original meaning, it is used to accentuate or add emphasis to a statement, and crucially, to signal belonging to a broader homogenous culture which does not see Islam and Muslims as interlopers. Its use has become a symbol of inclusion rather than exclusion.

While loan words in urban culture and street slang are the natural result of cultural proximity, they do not present the final frontiers of this form of lingual migration. As the internet provides the perfect environment for such social dialects to develop and consolidate, it also breaks down the barriers of entry into niche subcultures, creating a more fluid landscape where certain words or phrases seem to belong in multiple dialects. Terminology and language specific to certain subgroups catch on with alarming frequency and speed – be it African American Vernacular English, Swiftology or even a portmanteau specific to K-Pop. We now have access to a greater and richer fabric of language with varying degrees of understanding of where and how these words originate, and what their cultural and political dimensions might be. 

Understandably, this has led to accusations of linguistic appropriation and a disempowering of the minority communities whose need to create their own language often arises from structural disadvantage and linguistic denigration. As is the case with AAVE and queer argot, mainstream media has been a key disseminator of slang and phraseology specific to these communities through channels such as RuPaul’s Drag Race and other sanctioned forms of legacy media.

Arabic terminology, deemed exclusively Islamic in popular consciousness, due in part to broad ignorance on the subject of Islamic and Arabic culture, charts an entirely different trajectory.

Recent political history reveals that this is because of the way Islam has been uniquely framed as deviant in order to render it a scapegoat both domestically and internationally. In fact, there have been multiple efforts to criminalise Islamic worship in traditional media and politics. The all too familiar sight of a politician in the supposed heart of British democracy arguing for the criminalisation, in an ill pronounced manner, of ‘Allahu Akbar’ is a sight that resurfaces with alarming frequency – and each time constitutes a call to colonise the final domain of the Muslim, our very tongues.

In the persistent effort to otherise Islam and Muslims, Islamic terminology has ticked all the boxes designed for marginalised language; being deemed illegitimate, improper, and impolite, and entered the final stretch of dangerous and worthy of incrimination, a cage the establishment is insistent it remains in. In part due to this intense stigmatisation of some of the defining linguistics of our faith, Muslims are uniformly accepting of this rhetorical crossover of our sacred utterings into mainstream parlance.

Our embracing of the broader, non-Muslim use of Islamic terms is also a reflection of the Islamic tenet that Islam belongs to all of mankind, and which reflects the non-exclusive attitudes of these underpinning religious sentiments.

While language specific to minority communities is typically used to build in-group status, Islam is a radically populist religion which resists such gatekeeping and encourages the glorification of our Creator. There is a wholesome side to our celebrating of such mainstreaming of terms deemed Islamic, and this is rooted in the unadulterated love of Allah ﷻ.

While the internet effectively becomes an open source LLM (Large Language Model), it means that these terms, which have percolated organically through its democratic digital channels, are then initiated into establishment – the very establishment that, ironically, seeks to otherise and criminalise.

This is when linguistic fluidity stops being an innocuous, feel-good news story.

Hathaway, and other celebrities’ use of Islamic terms in populist media are designed to borrow from the illicitness and subversive nature these Islamic words have inherited. It is no coincidence that a defining Millennial movie, which depends upon the largest generation of cinema goers to keep it afloat, may need a few viral moments that appeal to the Gen Z ear, and actresses from previous generations, who depend upon remaining relevant, might want to be initiated into the annals of dissident subculture through effortless linguistic touch points. 

In many instances, these terms are cynically employed by the speaker so they are able to tap into this digital undercurrent and accrue cultural capital – a practice Muslims largely overlook because we are also dealing in religious capital, which is based in deeper, more edifying ground. Hathaway has been amply rewarded for the comment, earning several headlines across global media, and consequently being heralded as a kind of cultured figure who, to the mainstream media eye, is seemingly pure enough to carry Islamic symbolism without any of its sullying connotations.

What makes this continuing trend particularly insidious, though, is when established media and public figures capitalise off this continuing subjugation of Islam.

There is something disingenuous about those with the privilege and presence in mainstream media only referencing Islam and Muslims to benefit from its counter-culture perception.

This trend is most exemplified in the audacious example of Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential campaign, when he himself used the term inshaAllah during a televised debate against Trump. Biden employed that same knowing, ironic tone, alluding to urban youth culture, having just served in an Obama administration which accelerated drone warfare, killing a record number of Muslims, and just before architecting a genocide based on and continually justified by the indictable construct of the Muslim and Arab. It’s in Biden’s shameful example that we see the logical conclusion of this blatant leeching of such imbalances of power. 

Why is it that when a Muslim says Allahu Akbar with faith-intention, it is deemed criminal, yet when a celebrity with nebulous intent makes a proclamation of inshaAllah, it is celebrated by Muslims and Arabs across the globe.

What does it say about us as a community that this asymmetry goes largely unrecognised?

Why is the prestige attributed to these terms in secular, mainstream contexts directly inverse to the controversy they host in faith contexts? And could this be the cumulative impact of constantly rewarding shallow attempts at attention, at the expense of our community?

Etymologists studying linguistic trends in the accelerated age of the algorithm state that words emanating from minority communities often fall in and out of favour in the fickle register of public use. Words that remain in common usage often do so when they are both unobtrusive and fill a semantic gap. InshaAllah is a conditional expression which encapsulates both a sense of hope but also complete surrender. It captures the fragility of human intention with the all-encompassing might of Allah. It’s a phrase that matures in the Muslim mind as we age, becoming at first an expression which we see as disciplinary and disempowering, and then a tool we begin to wield with the confidence of understanding. Though incomparable to the vocabulary forged by other marginalised communities that face structural inequality, as it is not ours, or anyone’s, to own or keep– it’s anchored resolutely to its sacred meaning, because all of us sit within His Decree. In this way, it retains the fundamental purpose of language – to reference a real human condition – it cannot be repurposed by any group, be they socially desirable or not. 

Our common use of inshaAllah as Muslims is reflective of our own recognition that Allah is the ultimate Helper and Aid through our own systemic challenges.

It is a word that is so dear to us as individuals because of the significance it takes on, as a reflection of our relationship with Allah; how it absorbs the hopes and fears we entrust only our Creator with. It is equally significant to us as a community of believers, in how freely it rolls off the tongue, and emanates from the heart when we are in the affirming company of Muslims, how generously we dish out this prayer for our fellow believers, with the kind of limitless capacity only faith can engender. As a term that is rooted in the fitrah of all of us, it will never be empty of relevance, nor is it anything other than patterned by our very soul. 

InshaAllah looks like it will still be used both cynically and not, for people of no Islamic or Arabic speaking heritage. While we sometimes have the urge to cheer this on, I hope we can be more discerning about how and when we attribute praise to it going forward.